K+K Hotel Opera — Hotel in Budapest

APRIL 2024:

I see management responded to my review after 8 months.

My response:

Your manager at that time did not contact me until after the checkout date. So, no one actually did do anything to help.

July 2023: DON'T RUIN YOUR HOLIDAY AT THIS HOTEL

Short version of why I rated this hotel 1star

The hotel reception staff "Fanni" was unwelcoming. No shower curtain in the bathroom. She did not have any clue on what was available or not.

I sent an email to the hotel but did not hear back. They are not concerned about customer dissatisfaction.

Now, the long story.

The on arrival experience at the Opera hotel has been quite disappointing.

The receptionist 'Fanni' (Don't know if I have spelt it correctly) has been extremely unwelcoming. She has no clue what's happening.

We arrived at the hotel from London at 11:40 AM. She said we are too early and can keep the luggage and come back at 3PM for check in.

We asked if she could give us a call in case the room is available early but she wasn't helpful and said we'll need to come back later and she can check.

We then spent the time outside and came back at 2:40 PM. We asked her if the room is ready now, to which she replied we can fill in the form and she doesn't know if the room is ready or not.

This was already shocking for us to learn.

We again asked her if the room was still not ready and she said she didn't know.

While she gave us the form, her colleague was at the reception and he asked us if he could get our luggage. We told him that she said that the room isn't ready but he quickly (within seconds, looking at the computer screen) confirmed that it was ready.

This was ridiculously shocking. Fanni said she doesn't know and now this guy says it's ready.

We again asked Fanni if the room was ready and to our surprise she said it was ready (This all happened within minutes).

She gave us keys, directions to our room and that's it. No greetings or welcoming remarks.

Absolutely unprofessional!

After we got settled with the luggage in the room, we learnt there was no shower curtain but there were rings in the rod.

We called the front office and not sure who answered but we asked if there was a shower curtain in the bathroom and the lady on the call said "No" . She then said she could get one and have it set up.

After waiting for a few minutes, I went for a shower and noticed that the hotel had put a sign "Keep the shower curtain inside the bathtub". How can you put a sign and not know if there is a shower curtain in the bathroom or not???

After I took the shower, I called reception for room service because obviously there was some spill without the shower curtain.

The guy from the reception asked what I needed room service for and I told him that there was no shower curtain in the bathroom. To which, he responded surprisingly. I told him that I called earlier and the lady who answered the call did not know.

He said he was going to send someone and within a few minutes, the room service lady arrived and fixed the curtain.

You can imagine how frustrating all this is.

It's absolutely ridiculous to see how mismanaged the service is

at a four star property like this.

I sent this detailed information to the hotel email but got no response.

No one contacted me. They have no management whatsoever.

Please look for another hotel for a...

The hotel management is not flexible at all: There is no way to check in earlier than 15:00! OK this is the official time, but always the excuse is like "your room sir is not prepared". It's my 4th visit there and the excuse is always the same, even when the hotel is not fully booked. It's their policy (I waited in the lobby for over 3h as I had to do something over my PC) and the excuses were always the same, to everyone that came even at 14:00.  (most hotels worldwide are flexible on this early check in option, specially with guests that seem to arrive after long flights, they give this early check in option (like 12:00 or 13:00) , so that their guests can rest and of course to offer the best service experience to them).

Staying 2 nights there was not happy at all, not only for the "check in strictly" approach (somehow they ask you for the documents and the preauthorization in advance, i mean before they give you the keys..)

About breakfast: very unfriendly and unprofessional behavior, when for example on weekends it is till 11:00 and they start picking plates and products from the buffet at 10:40! I can accept not to refill, because it goes to the end, but picking up 20' before it ends, while we are 10+ people, it's a sign of lack of hospitality and as I mentioned before, it's unprofessional. First time in my life, i didn' see honey as an option. Also the next day, breakfast stopped at 10:30 again the collection started from 10:15 even people were eating inside the breakfast area..

The reason to choose the hotel is the fact that it has a fitness center, as I run almost every day (many times Marathon finisher), no matter the weather conditions during to my trip.Visiting the fitness center, 07:30 in the morning to run, I was unhappily surprised as no one of the 2 treadmill machines was working! In the meantime, no sign on the fitness entrance about this, even in the hotel website or social media, was something mentioned, as it happens to all serius hotels by the management (in advance information to guests).

Trying to see if these are connected properly or there is something that i can do by myself, but there is no way to do something to fix and work as it seems that the one (the right one in the photo was out of order, the other one the left was broken (you can check in photo as well). so I went to the reception (08:45), mentioned the problem and asked to fix the problem. Supposed that someone was about to come (according to the reception) so I moved back to the hotel Gym.

After 20 minutes (08:05), nobody came to the fitness center. In the meantime I was freezing as was with sports clothes on the -1 floor without any heating, while outside it was -4oC.. Returned back to the reception, but it seems to me that they never paid any attention to my previous request, as they never called anyone from the maintenance team. In the end, again back to the Gym, while about 08:25 someone came, after checking both machines, he informed me that both treadmiles were out of order. In the end, I lost over 1h of my life, returned to my room, disappointed and started sneezing after staying in the cold room, such a long time, waiting for a solution, for services that I had paid for, but never...

Very nice location right by the opera house. I discovered after I arrived, this hotel had two styles of rooms, new style and an unrefurbished rooms. I had the latter and loved it. Metre upon metre of teak and sapele coloured woodwork. Neat square sectioned steel lamp bases. A gigantic bed. The hotel could just as easily have described these rooms as mid-century chic and attracted Europe's vintage furniture fans. It's a style that has avoided being updated and inadvertently come back into fashion.

The room was immaculately maintained and absolutely spotless, the bathroom grout looked brand-new, paintwork was 100%. The carpet was in superb order. It's old fashioned but clearly taken care of.

The hotel is very quiet, the air conditioning works great, there are tea and coffee making facilities that got replenished during the day, the price seems like awesome value for money to me.

Reception staff were also excellent  check in was fast and they were friendly, professional and courteous when I paid the city tax and my snacks tab.

There's one negative about this hotel. I booked it via a hotel booking site so I obviously had to put my email address in the booking for the confirmation. That email address got passed to the hotel that then saw fit to spam me. I did not consent to receiving marketing messages from the hotel so spamming me is a violation of GDPR. There was no lawful base established.

In this hotel's case, they sent me the unsolicited email in German, a language that I do not speak. They addressed me by my surname only, which feels rude, and the upselling website they sent to me actually did not work anyway.

I'd stay here again but I'd probably give them a fake email address because I don't trust them to not bother me with unsolicited and useless marketing.

UPDATE: It seems most strange that the front office manager wrote to me saying "only the pre arrival welcome letter was sent to you email address giving you more information and help for your visit to Budapest and to our hotel." Do they understand I do not immediately delete all my emails and I can check this?

I received an email which could be considered a welcome message and this did have information relating to check in and the hotel.

I then received a message offering additional services such as breakfast, a room upgrade, and transfers. This email asked me to email reception if I wanted anything else but the email address is ----@--------.--- so no point to it anyway.

I then got a third message in German which only links to a hotel upselling platform. This website offers me breakfast for HUF6300, Sekt im Zimmer (whatever that is) for HUF8265, Szechenyi Spa for HUF13000, Late Check-Out (14:00) for HUF12300, Parkplatz for HUF9100, Early Check-In for HUF12300, Transfer vom Flughafen for HUF19700 and a room upgrade for HUF6300.

This unsolicited commercial email, the literal definition of spam. So why not just take the feedback on board instead of coming to Google Maps to...